standing army, and bred in traditions of triumphant militarism.
Ah, but (we are told) he should have waited for the young generation. Were not young Afrikanders growing up who had education and could understand the inevitable forces at work? Odd as it may seem, the educated young Afrikanders did not consider these forces inevitable. They thought the Republican would be—or they could make it—me winning cause in South Africa. Test it in the concrete. Take a case wholly favourable, you would have said—a clever, ambitious young Afrikander of high character who was making his choice just when Milner came to Cape Town—Mr. J. C. Smuts. Born and bred a Cape Colonist, Mr. Smuts was loyal, of course—it seems but the other day he took honours at Cambridge. He chooses Pretoria. In a year or two behold him State Attorney: honest, competent, acridly Republican, talking (like General Trepoff) of reform, but as careful as he, or as Kruger himself, that reform should not touch the tap-root of exclusive power; next, counsel for reform (the Trepoff kind) at the Bloemfontein Conference … next, before the war ends, a Commandant spiritedly raiding his old Colony. And to-day? To-day Mr. Smuts is civis Britannicus once more. A great career in politics is assured to him by his talents and the title of a Boer ex-General; a great career at the Bar by his talents and the eager retainers of Johannesburg. He accepts the new order, quotes Schopenhauer to inquiring pro-Boers, and corresponds with the High Commissioner on the requirements of a truly democratic suffrage. Of course, he is loyal; English admirers quote his speeches, sombrely pledging his faith to the logic of the stricken field. Do I impugn it? Not at all. My question is, on the contrary, How far would England have got with that young man by any other logic? How far by 'waiting a generation'?
General de Wet's war book affords a similar startling sidelight—one among many thrown by the war—upon
